Nearly 200 award nominees competed to take home top honors at the 2015 Military Health System Research Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Aug. 17-20.

Three researchers earned MHSRS Young Investigator Competition awards, including Cmdr. Ed Barnard, who earned first place for his work on selective aortic arch perfusion for the reversal of hemorrhage-induced traumatic cardiac arrest in a swine model of non-compressible torso hemorrhage. In second and third place were Capt. George Black and Srinivas Laxminarayan, PhD, respectively.

Receiving the Distinguished Service Award was Col. Jay Johannigman, director of Trauma and Critical Care at the Department of Surgery, University of Cincinnati.

Dr. Kia Washington, a Veteran Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System surgeon and researcher, earned the Outstanding Research Accomplishment in the academic category. Washington's award recognized her contributions to the science of eye transplantation. Washington, a pioneer in the nascent field of eye transplantation, is exploring how to reconnect microscopic blood vessels and optical nerves to a transplanted eye. One goal of these efforts is to give the gift of sight to wounded warriors left blinded in the line of duty.

Also being recognized with an Outstanding Research Accomplishment award in the military category was Lt. Col. Andre Cap, Chief of Coagulation and Blood Research at the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research.

Several teams also received Outstanding Research Accomplishment awards, including:

• Academic - The team of Levi Hargrove, PhD, of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago/Northwestern University, Chicago
• Academic (honorable mention) - The team of John Childs, PhD, of the U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School, Health Readiness Center of Excellence in San Antonio, Texas
• Intramural - The team of Col. Emil Lesho, of the Multidrug-Resistant Organism Repository and Surveillance Network/ARMOR Program at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center
• Intramural (honorable mention) - The team of David Luxton, PhD, National Center for Telehealth and Technology

The event also included an opportunity for more than 750 researchers to exhibit posters. Of these, leadership named nine award winners and six honorable mentions. Best in show for posters went to the team of Laurel Ng, PhD., L-3 Communications, San Diego, California, for their poster on "A Probabilistic Concussion Model Relating Head Impact Kinematics to Internal Axonal Level Injury and Clinical Outcomes for Interpretation of Wearable Sensor Data."

MHSRS is DOD's premier scientific annual meeting, which combines three previous conferences, including the former Advanced Technology Applications for Combat Casualty Care Conference; the Air Force Medical Service Medical Research Symposium; and the Navy Medicine Research Conference. By combining these conferences into one event, the meeting serves as a critical strategy session for leaders to set future milestones for the Department of Defense's deployment-related medical research programs, centered on the needs of the Warfighter.